Mr. Dixon disappears: a mobile library mystery by Ian Sansom

chicken bits in the palms of his hands. 'Erm…'
    'You're lucky I didn't…'
    'Quite,' said Israel.
    'You ragin' eejit,' said George.
    'Sorry. That's the second time today someone's pointed a gun at me, actually.'
    'Aye, well, maybe third time lucky,' said George, lowering the gun.
    'Right. Thanks,' said Israel.
    George was turning to go.
    'Actually, George,' said Israel.
    'What?'
    'I need to ask you a favour.'
    'No,' said George, turning back.
    'Please. You haven't heard what it is yet.'
    'No. It's midnight. You're in my kitchen stealing my food, and you're lucky you're not bleedin' like a stuck pig. So the answer to whatever you're asking is no.'
    'It's just…'
    ' No! Do you understand the word?'
    'Yes. It's just, I just wondered about your…erm, your gun there? If I could maybe borrow it if I needed it?'
    'Are you out of your tiny English mind, Armstrong?'
    'No. It's just—'
    'No! No! No! '
    'What about the car then? Could I maybe borrow the car tomorrow? Just while I've not got the van to fall back on.'
    'No!'
    'But I need some transport, George, at least, if I'm going to be able to prove my innocence, and I've only got a week to—'
    'It's not my problem, Armstrong. You've got yourself into a mess, you get yourself out of it. Without my gun, and without my car–you lunatic! Goodnight,' she said, slamming the door behind her.
    'Goodnight,' said Israel feebly.
    He looked at the chicken pieces in his hand, and put them in the bin. He'd lost his appetite.
    If he'd been a detective in one of Brownie's crime novels he'd have drunk a half-bottle of whisky and gone driving off into the night listening to his favourite music while making incredible deductive leaps.
    Instead, he felt silently sorry for himself, made a cup of tea and went to bed.

8
    The Reverend England Roberts stood at the front of the church. He was wearing his customary grey lounge suit and his far too wide, Adam's-apple-accentuating dog collar, and he was speaking–or, rather, booming–in his usual fashion into a microphone, which seemed to distort and amplify not merely his words, but also his personality. His habitual mischievous gleaming smile had been replaced with that peculiar look of the Christian ministering, that look that Israel had seen on the faces of all the old Presbyterian ministers in the photographs in the Reverend Roberts's robing room, a look way beyond smiling, a look of perfect yet somehow undefined profundity, a look of brow-furrowing tranquillity, as though contemplating some utterly obvious yet infinitely complex mathematical problem. It was a look…Israel was trying to think where he'd seen that look before. Well, to be honest, it was a post-coital kind of a look, that was what it was, Israel thought, though it seemed wrong, confusing sexual and religious emotions, particularly in a church, mixing up ultimate and penultimate truths. He had to shake his head to get the thought out of his mind; but then that was religion for you, in his opinion: it got you all confused.
    The reverend was reading from the tiny brown leather pocket Bible in his hand.
    '"Early on the Sunday morning,"' he boomed, the church's loudspeakers rattling its vast accompaniment of hums and whistles, '"while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb."' The deep 'oo' of the reverend's 'tomb' here rang high and low, reverberating around the church, setting off a high-pitched feedback to follow it, which came bouncing off the walls like some small demented creature hurtling in pursuit of a big bass-baritone bear. As the reverend took a breath and paused between intonations, a man wearing a canary-yellow tie and an ill-fitting brown polyester suit that crackled as he moved darted forward from the front row of seats, and started fiddling with the cable of the microphone. The Reverend Roberts paused until the man in the suit gave a thumbs up, nodded apologetically and retreated back, statically, from whence he had come.
    'OK. Thank you. Is that better?'